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tiuNi oi965 A Small
uwh i£Bi^u<®j^ft m u n ity
Gets Big-Time
Data Processing
. . . and saves money
through a contract with a
data-processing center
Windsor officials visit the data-processing center's
laboratory where IBM equipment keeps the
town's finance records up-to-date.
By ROBERT B. WEISS
Town Manager
Windsor, Conn.
Small communities faced with the
constant pressure for more machinery, more help, more reports
and, of course, lower taxes, may
find a valuable friend in electronic
data processing. Windsor, Conn.,
did. But it required the help of
a commercial data-processing center and the cooperation of neighboring communities to make the
system pay off.
Since 1950, Windsor produced
its tax lists, tax collector's rate
books and tax bills on a bookeeping
machine. This system worked well
until our population jumped from
10,000 to 21,000 over the last ten
years. The added workload made
it impossible for our machine to
turn out these reports in the time
allowed, by statute, with existing
personnel. This left us with what
looked like three alternatives, all
expensive: We could increase the
number of employees; we could buy
more equipment; or we could do
both.
However, a fourth, less costly
choice developed. About this same
time, the author attended an International City Managers' Association conference in San Francisco.
At one session, an expert from the
Rand Corp., a non-profit research
organization in Santa Monica,
Calif., discussed data processing in
municipal operations, outlining one
approach which seemed ideally
suited for our needs. He proposed
renting the services of a commercial
data-processing center located in or
near the city.
Shortly after my return, an official from the Data Processing
Corp. of Hartford contacted Windsor Assessor J. Richard Vincent.
He told Mr. Vincent that a system
could be devised using electronic
computers that would quickly and
economically produce abstracts,
rate books and tax bills.
Initially, we felt that such a system would be too expensive. Subsequent studies proved otherwise.
We found that a company could
invest in the systems analysis and
programming, and prorate the cost
to several participating towns. This
would lower the cost for all. The
private company would furnish all
the equipment and personnel. The
town would pay only for the finished product.
In with the New
We considered several proposals
but decided to stick with the service-bureau approach. After months
of systems analyses, the assessor,
Tax Collector John McKeon and
the Data Processing Corp. developed the necessary programs. Then
they revised and tested each phase
until they worked out most of the
bugs.
As a result, we placed the Assessor's Owner's Summary Cards on
a magnetic tape. An IBM 1401
computer, in turn, produced from
the tape a final abstract. The state
Motor Vehicle Department supplied
a tape for our Motor Vehicle abstract. It saved us the conversion
costs for this phase of the program.
Moreover, the computer operation
cut the time required to produce
the final abstracts from several
months to several hours.
We manually verified the completed abstracts against the source.
Since the taped data will become
the source of other reports, we felt
that we needed to take this extra
effort. A full year of experience
has proved the wisdom of the manual check.
The design of our system never
really ends. As new ideas develop,
we incorporate them into the system. This improves the over-all
performance of the entire operation.
Much to our surprise, the new
system costs less than the old when
we allow for such real factors as
depreciation and maintenance costs
for the bookkeeping machines,
wages for machine operators and
cost of forms.
Over our three-year contract period, we will more than break even.
The processing cost averaged from
THE AMERICAN CITY
April 1965
103